(Untitled)

[obfuscate]

First day of class:

Instructor tells us how to go to a website. Literally explains that we can just delete this part right here, and then type in his ulid - that's his university ID - and it'll take him to the website.

Fourth day of class:

We watch this video, which is a ver-fucking-batim presentation of this godawful article right here, which I

Comments

[laughingimp]

"Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want," said Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape and creator of the first commercial Internet browser. "That is why I am sure the next Napster is going to come out of left field."

And by "left field," he means "brown people."

When the article says "the playing field is being flattened," I think the author means "there are non-white, non-Western players that we can't just kick around and ignore any more." Which is valid, I guess, but the tone strikes me as a warning, which really rubs me the wrong way.

[obfuscate]

It's an awful article. I showed it to luminousx last night, and he was sort of giving me a play by play of how it was gradually pissing him off more and more.

[laughingimp]

Yeah, that kind of play-by-play was forming in my mind, too.

Llama Face is in the other room, ranting.

[suzermagoozer]

omg i would hang myself.

[llamachameleon]

I want to strangle the author of that article until he's dead, and then strangle him some more. I love the part where he compares call centers in India to communists with missiles pointed at American cities...

The World is Spiky

[cos]

I hope Richard Florida's response, The World is Spiky, is on the syllabus too. Friedman seems to just talk out of his ass these days; Florida has solid theory and solid demographic research underlying it.

Re: The World is Spiky

[obfuscate]

Oh, sweet. Thanks for the link. I haven't checked, but I suspect it's not on the list.

Re: The World is Spiky

[cos]

What is it you're supposed to be learning in this class?

Re: The World is Spiky

[obfuscate]

Yeah, um.

I'm gonna get back to you on that.

[genevieve1352]

Between this and Lisa's recent post, I fear for the future of this country.

(To be fair, the RNC this week isn't helping with that.)